Shawn Colvin - All Fall Down Review

Shawn Colvin's pedigree in the music business is rich indeed. Her debut album won a Grammy, she's toured with Richard Thompson - she's even appeared on Treme and The Simpsons.
Her 2012 album All Fall Down is produced by Buddy Miller (a friend of Colvin's since the 1970s) and between them, they have created an assured and imaginative album. South Dakota-born Colvin, who is 56, says the album is about "loss and redemption". American Jerusalem, Seven Times The Charm and Anne of the Thousand Days are all strong, complex songs.
The album was recorded at Miller's Nashville home studio and the assembled cast of musicians is superb. Alison Krauss, Emmylou Harris, Jakob Dylan and Bill Frisell are among those who appear....full text Confessional singer-songwriters love to spill their guts. After all, it’s part of their job description. But normally they confine their revelations to the music.

Shawn Colvin went the extra mile on that one.

On Tuesday, she’ll issue both a new album, “All Fall Down,” which chronicles a particularly rotten breakup, and a memoir (“Diamond in the Rough”) which reveals the alcoholism she experienced in her 20s, her many bouts with depression and the romantic disasters that have given her enough writing material to last several lifetimes....full text Shawn Colvin took a six-year break from the recording studio after the release of 2006's These Four Walls, biding her time with a live album in 2009, and on 2012's All Fall Down, Colvin shows she was clearly in the mood to try something different. While her frequent co-writer John Leventhal has produced most of her albums, for All Fall Down she went into the studio with Buddy Miller, one of the most distinctive songwriters and instrumentalists working in Nashville today, and the result ranks with Colvin's most satisfying work since the '90s. The tenor of Colvin's material hasn't changed much -- All Fall Down's 11 tracks, eight of which were co-written by Colvin, are full of stories about people struggling with the eternal conflicts of the heart, the soul, and the conscience, all delivered with Colvin's characteristic literacy and hard-won compassion. But the atmospheric soundscapes Miller and his studio crew have constructed for Colvin give the songs a gravity that's organic and otherworldly at once, and the way her voice melds with the broad spaces of Miller and Bill Frisell's guitars and the careful report of Brian Blade's drumming reinforces the musicality of her performances....full text Shawn Colvin released her first solo album, Steady On in 1989 and won a grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album. She then won Grammy’s Song Of The Year and Record of the Year with mega-smash “Sunny Came Home” in 1998. Since that time she has made a few more studio records including her eighth and latest, All Fall Down. Produced by her long time friend Buddy Miller, the album continues on in the vein of her folk stylings, but also tends to sprinkle in some country flavors as well.

The title cut starts things off by giving the listener an idea on exactly what they should be expecting throughout the album. Everyone will have their own favorite, ours is “Knowing What I Know Now”, a stunning track that Colvin wrote with her longtime collaborator, John Leventhal. Bassist Viktor Krauss also co-wrote another standout cut “I Don’t Know You”. The album also features many other guest stars such as Alison Krauss, Emmylou Harris, Jakob Dylan, Bill Frisell and Julie Miller among many others....full text